Part 66

"The numbers at the Port Royal had increased to eighty, and the situation was so unhealthy that there were many deaths. In 1626 they moved to Paris, and the abbey in the fields remained for many years deserted. M. Zamet, a pious but not a great man, for a while had the spiritual charge of the Port Royal, but in 1634 the abbé of St. Cyran became its director. To his influence is due the position it took in the coming conflict of Jansenism, and the effects of his teachings can be seen in the sisters, and in most of the illustrious recluses who attached themselves to the monastery. St. Cyran had been an early associate of Jansenius, whose writings became such a fire-brand in the Church. As young men they devoted the most of five years to an intense study of St. Augustine. It is said Jansenius read all of his works ten times, and thirty times his treatises against the Pelagians. The two students resolved to attempt a reformation in the belief of the Church, which they thought was falling away from many of the tenets of the father. {2566} Jansenius was presently made bishop of Ypres by the Spanish as a reward for a political tract, but he pursued his studies in his new bishopric. … In 1640, the Augustinus appeared, in which the bishop of Ypres sought, by a full reproduction of the doctrines of St. Augustine, to bring the Church back from the errors of the Pelagians to the pure and severe tenets of the great father. The doctrine of grace, the very corner–stone of the Christian faith, was that which Jansenius labored to revive. Saint Augustine had taught that, before the fall of our first parents, man, being in astute of innocence, could of his own free will do works acceptable to God; but after that his nature was so corrupted, that no good thing could proceed from it, save only as divine grace worked upon him. This grace God gave as He saw fit, working under his eternal decrees, and man, except as predestined and elected to its sovereign help, could accomplish no righteous act, and must incur God's just wrath. But the Pelagians and semi-Pelagians had departed from this doctrine, and attributed a capacity to please God, to man's free will and the deeds proceeding from it—a belief which could but foster his carnal pride and hasten his damnation. The Jesuits were always desirous to teach religion so that it could most easily be accepted, and they had inclined to semi-Pelagian doctrines, rather than to the difficult truths of St. Augustine. Yet no one questioned his authority. The dispute was as to the exact interpretation of his writings. Jansenius claimed to have nothing in his great book save the very word of Augustine, or its legitimate result. The Jesuits replied that his writings contained neither the doctrine of Augustine nor the truth of God. They appealed to the Pope for the condemnation of these heresies. Jansenius had died before the publication of his book, but his followers, who were soon named after him, endeavored to defend his works from censure. … It was not until 1653 that the influence of the Jesuits succeeded in obtaining the condemnation of the offending book. In that year, Innocent X. issued a bull, by which he condemned as heretical five propositions contained in the Augustinus. … The members of the Port Royal adopted the Jansenist cause. Saint Cyran had been a fellow worker with Jansenius, and he welcomed the Augustinus as a book to revive and purify the faith of the Church. … The rigid predestinarianism of Jansen had a natural attraction for the stern zeal of the Port Royal. The religion of the convent and of those connected with it bordered on asceticism. They lived in the constant awe of God, seeking little communion with the world, and offering to it little compromise. … An intense and rigorous religious life adopts an intense and rigorous belief. The Jansenists resembled the English and American Puritans. They shared their Calvinistic tenets and their strict morality. A Jansenist, said the Jesuits, is a Calvinist saying mass. No accusation was more resented by those of the Jansenist party. They sought no alliance with the Protestants. Saint Cyran and Arnauld wrote prolifically against the Calvinists. They were certainly separated from the latter by their strong devotion to two usages of the Catholic Church which were especially objectionable to Protestants—the mass and the confessional. … In 1647, Mother Angelique with some of the sisters returned to Port Royal in the Fields. The convent at Paris continued in close relations with it, but the abbey in the fields was to exhibit the most important phases of devotional life. Before the return of the sisters, this desolate spot had begun to be the refuge for many eminent men, whose careers became identified with the fate of the abbey. 'We saw arrive,' writes one of them, 'from diverse provinces, men of different professions, who, like mariners that had suffered shipwreck, came to seck the Port.' M. le Maitre, a nephew of Mother Angelique, a lawyer of much prominence, a counsellor of state, a favorite of the chancellor and renowned for his eloquent harangues, abandoned present prosperity and future eminence, and in 1638 built a little house, near the monastery, and became the first of those who might be called the hermits of the Port Royal. Not taking orders, nor becoming a member of any religious body, he sought a life of lonely devotion in this barren place. … Others gradually followed, until there grew up a community, small in numbers, but strong in influence, united in study, in penance, in constant praise and worship. Though held together by no formal vows, few of those who put hand to the plough turned back from the work. They left their beloved retreat only when expelled by force, and with infinite regret. The monastery itself had become dilapidated. It was surrounded by stagnant waters, and the woods near by were full of snakes. But the recluses found religious joy amid this desolation. … As their numbers increased they did much, however, to improve the desolate retreat they had chosen. … Some of the recluses cultivated the ground. Others even made shoes, and the Jesuits dubbed them the cobblers. They found occupation not only in such labors and in solitary meditation, but in the more useful work of giving the young an education that was sound in learning and grounded in piety. The schools of the Port Royal had a troubled existence of about fifteen years. Though they rarely had over fifty pupils, yet in this brief period they left their mark. Racine, Tillemont, and many others of fruitful scholarship and piety were among the pupils who were watched and trained by the grave anchorites with a tender and fostering care. … The judicious teachers of the Port Royal taught reading in French, and in many ways did much to improve the methods of French instruction and scholarship. The children were thoroughly trained also in Greek and Latin, in logic and mathematics. Their teachers published admirable manuals for practical study in many branches. 'They sought,' says one, 'to render study more agreeable than play or games.' The jealousy of the Jesuits, who were well aware of the advantages of controlling the education of the young, at last obtained the order for the final dispersion of these little schools, and in 1660 they were closed for ever. Besides these manuals for teaching, the literature of the Port Royal comprised many controversial works, chief among them the forty-two volumes of Arnauld. It furnished also a translation of the Bible by Saci, which, though far from possessing the merits of the English version of King James, is one of the best of the many French translations. But the works of Blaise Pascal were the great productions of the Port Royal, as he himself was its chief glory. The famous Provincial Letters originated from the controversy over Jansenism, though they soon turned from doctrinal questions to an attack on the morality of the Jesuits that permanently injured the influence of that body."

_J. B. Perkins, France under Mazarin, chapter 20 (volume 2)._

ALSO IN: _M. A. Schimmelpenninck, Select Memoirs of Port Royal._

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PORT ROYAL: A. D. 1702-1715. Renewed persecution. Suppression and destruction of the Monastery. The odious Bull Unigenitus, and its tyrannical enforcement.

"The Jesuits had been for some time at a low ebb, in the beginning of the 18th century, the Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, then ruling the King through Madame de Maintenon, and himself submitting to the direction of Bossuet. The imprudence of the Jansenists, their indefatigable spirit of dispute, restored to their enemies the opportunity to retrieve their position. In 1702, forty Sorbonne doctors resuscitated the celebrated question of fact concerning the five propositions of Jansenius, and maintained that, in the presence of the decisions of the Church on points of fact and not of dogma, a respectful silence sufficed without internal acquiescence. Some other propositions of a Jansenistic tendency accompanied this leading question. Bossuet hastened to interfere to stifle the matter, and to induce the doctors to retract. … Thirty-nine doctors retracted out of forty. The King forbade the publication thenceforth of anything concerning these matters, but, in his own name, and that of Philip V. [of Spain, his grandson], entreated Pope Clement XI. to renew the constitutions of his predecessors against Jansenism. … Clement XI. responded to the King's wishes by a Bull which fell in the midst of the assembly of the clergy in 1705. Cardinal de Noailles, who presided, made reservations against the infallibility of the Church in affairs of fact. The assembly, animated with a Gallican spirit, accepted the Bull, but established that the constitutions of the Popes bind the whole Church only when they have been accepted by the bodies of the pastors,' and that this acceptance on the part of the bishops is made 'by way of judgment.' The court of Rome was greatly offended that the bishops should claim to 'judge' after it, and this gave rise to long negotiations: the King induced the bishops to offer to the Pope extenuating explanations. The Jesuits, however, regained the ascendency at Versailles, and prepared against Cardinal de Noailles a formidable engine of war." The Cardinal had given his approval, some years before, to a work—"Moral Reflections on the New Testament"—published by Father Quesnel, who afterwards became a prominent Jansenist. The Jesuits now procured the condemnation of this work, by the congregation of the Index, and a decree from the Pope prohibiting it. "This was a rude assault on Cardinal de Noailles. The decree, however, was not received in France, through a question of form, or rather, perhaps, because the King was then dissatisfied with the Pope, on account of the concessions of Clement XI. to the House of Austria. The Jansenists gained nothing thereby. At this very moment, a terrible blow was about to fall on the dearest and most legitimate object of their veneration." The nuns of Port-Royal of the Fields having refused to subscribe to the papal constitution of 1705, the Pope had subjected them to the Abbess of Port-Royal of Paris, "who did not share their Augustinian faith (1708). They resisted. Meanwhile, Father La Chaise [the King's confessor] died, and Le Tellier succeeded him. The affair was carried to the most extreme violence. Cardinal de Noailles, a man of pure soul and feeble character, was persuaded, in order to prove that he was not a Jansenist, to cruelty, despite himself, towards the rebellious nuns. They were torn from their monastery and dispersed through different convents (November, 1709). The illustrious abbey of Port-Royal, hallowed, even in the eyes of unbelievers, by the name of so many great men, by the memory of so much virtue, was utterly demolished, by the order of the lieutenant of police, D'Argenson. Two years after, as if it were designed to exile even the shades that haunted the valley, the dead of Port-Royal were exhumed, and their remains transferred to a village cemetery (at Magny). Noailles, while he entered into this persecution, took the same course, nevertheless, as the nuns of Port-Royal, by refusing to retract the approbation which he had given to the 'Moral Reflections.' Le Tellier caused him to be denounced to the King. … The King prohibited Quesnel's book by a decree in council (November 11, 1711), and demanded of the Pope a new condemnation of this book, in a form that could be received in France. The reply of Clement XI. was delayed until September 8, 1713; this was the celebrated Unigenitus Bull, the work of Le Tellier far more than of the Pope, and which, instead of the general terms of the Bull of 1708, expressly condemned 101 propositions extracted from the 'Moral Reflections.' … The Bull dared condemn the very words of St. Augustine and of St. Paul himself; there were propositions, on other matters than grace, the condemnation of which was and should have been scandalous, and seemed veritably the triumph of Jesuitism over Christianity; for example, those concerning the necessity of the love of God. It had dared to condemn this: 'There is no God, there is no religion, where there is not charity.' This was giving the pontifical sanction to the Jesuitical theories most contrary to the general spirit of Christian theology. It was the same with the maxims relative to the Holy Scriptures. The Pope had anathematized the following propositions: 'The reading of the Holy Scriptures is for all. Christians should keep the Sabbath-day holy by reading the Scriptures; it is dangerous to deprive them of these.' And also this: 'The fear of unjust excommunication should not prevent us from doing our duty.' This was overturning all political Gallicanism." The acceptance of the Bull was strongly but vainly resisted. The King and the King's malignant confessor spared no exercise of their unbridled power to compel submission to it. "It was endeavored to stifle by terror public opinion contrary to the Bull: exiles, imprisonments, were multiplied from day to day." And still, when Louis XIV. died, on the 1st day of September, 1715, the struggle was not at an end.

_H. Martin, History of France: Age of Louis XIV., volume 2, chapter 6._

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"It is now time that I should say something of the infamous bull Unigenitus, which by the unsurpassed audacity and scheming of Father Le Tellier and his friends was forced upon the Pope and the world. I need not enter into a very lengthy account of the celebrated Papal decree which has made so many martyrs, depopulated our schools, introduced ignorance, fanaticism, and misrule, rewarded vice, thrown the whole community into the greatest confusion, caused disorder everywhere, and established the most arbitrary and the most barbarous inquisition; evils which have doubled within the last thirty years. I will content myself with a word or two, and will not blacken further the pages of my Memoirs. … It is enough to say that the new bull condemned in set terms the doctrines of St. Paul, … and also those of St. Augustin, and of other fathers; doctrines which have always been adopted by the Popes, by the Councils, and by the Church itself. The bull, as soon as published, met with a violent opposition in Rome from the cardinals there, who went by sixes, by eights, and by tens, to complain of it to the Pope. … He protested … that the publication had been made without his knowledge, and put off the cardinals with compliments, excuses, and tears, which last he could always command. The constitution had the same fate in France as in Rome. The cry against it was universal."

_Duke of Saint Simon, Memoirs (abridged translation by St. John), volume 3, chapter 6._

"Jansenism … laid hold upon all ecclesiastical bodies with very few exceptions, it predominated altogether in theological literature; all public schools that were not immediately under the Jesuits, or, as in Spain, under the Inquisition, held Jansenist opinions, at least so far as the majority of their theologians were concerned. In Rome itself this teaching was strongly represented amongst the cardinals." Fenelon declared "that nobody knew—now that the controversy and the condemnations had gone on for sixty years—in what the erroneous doctrine exactly consisted; for the Roman court stuck fast to the principle of giving no definition of what ought to be believed, so that the same doctrine which it apparently rejected in one form, was unhesitatingly accepted at Rome itself when expressed in other though synonymous terms. … The same thing which under one name was condemned, was under another, as the teaching of the Thomists or Augustinians, declared to be perfectly orthodox. … Just because nobody could tell in what sense such propositions as those taken from the works of Jansenius or Quesnel were to be rejected, did they become valuable; for the whole question was turned into one of blind obedience and submission, without previous investigation. The Jesuit D'Aubenton, who as Tellier's agent in Rome had undertaken to procure that the passages selected from Quesnel's book should be condemned, repeatedly informed his employer that at Rome everything turned upon the papal infallibility; to get this passed whilst the king was ready to impose, by force of arms, upon the bishops and clergy the unquestioning acceptance of the papal constitution, was the only object."

_J. I. von Döllinger, Studies in European History, chapter 12._

ALSO IN: _W. H. Jarvis, History of the Church of France, volume 2, chapters 5-7._

_F. Rocquain, The Revolutionary Spirit preceding the French Revolution, chapter 1._

PORT ROYAL: End--------

PORT ROYAL, Nova Scotia: Start--------

PORT ROYAL, Nova Scotia: A. D. 1603-1613. Settled by the French, and destroyed by the English.

See CANADA: A. D. 1603-1605; 1606-1608; and 1610-1613.

PORT ROYAL, Nova Scotia: A. D. 1690. Taken by an expedition from Massachusetts.

See CANADA: A. D. 1689-1690.

PORT ROYAL, Nova Scotia: A. D. 1691. Recovered by the French.

See CANADA: A. D. 1692-1697.

PORT ROYAL, Nova Scotia: A. D. 1710. Final conquest by the English and change of name to Annapolis Royal.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1702-1710.

PORT ROYAL, Nova Scotia: End--------

PORT ROYAL EXPEDITION, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER: SOUTH CAROLINA-GEORGIA).

PORTCHESTER, Origin of.

See PORTUS MAGNUS.

PORTE, The Sublime.

See SUBLIME PORTE; also PHARAOH.

PORTEOUS RIOT, The.

See EDINBURGH: A. D. 1736.

PORTER, Admiral David D.: Capture of New Orleans.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (APRIL: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).

Second attempt against Vicksburg.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (DECEMBER: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).

PORTICO, The Athenian, Suppression of.

See ATHENS: A. D. 529.

PORTLAND MINISTRY, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1806-1812.

PORTO NOVO, Battle of (1781).

See INDIA: A. D. 1780-1783.

PORTO RICO: Discovery by Columbus (1493).

See AMERICA: A. D. 1493-1496.

PORTO VENERE, Naval Battle of (1494).

See ITALY: A. D. 1494-1496.

PORTOBELLO: A. D. 1668.

Capture by the Buccaneers.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1639-1700.

PORTOBELLO: A. D. 1740. Capture by Admiral Vernon.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1739-1741.

PORTOLONGO, or Sapienza, Battle of (1354).

See CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1348-1355.

PORTUGAL: Start--------

PORTUGAL: Early history. Mistaken identification with ancient Lusitania. Roman, Gothic, Moorish and Spanish conquests. The county of Henry of Burgundy.